Thursday, November 23, 2006

Monday, November 20, 2006

Just when I thought I might be able to breeze into the Thanksgiving holiday without anyone getting my dander up and simply enjoy the season, two items cross my path and remind me why conservatism is such a bankrupt philosophy.

The first is a blog post by, none other than Patrick McIlheran. No surprise there, the man is a weiner. In this post, entitled: “Who cares? Quantitatively, that is: Who cares?", McIlheran drones on about a piece of fieldwork done by Syracuse Professor Arthur C. Brooks. Brooks apparently proves that (in McIlheran’s words) “…it’s religious conservatives who give more to compassionate causes than secular liberals.”

Four things came to mind while reading the post. One: Beliefnet, which is where McIlheran grabbed this piece of flotsam, is hardly unbiased. Disregard.

Two: The sentence written above in point one by McIlheran was obviously done without the aid of any serious thought (uh, since over 90 percent of the population has some sort of a belief in God, it’s unlikely that secularism rules the liberal side). Disregard.

Three: Brooks was a Democrat, then a Republican and now is independent … oh, okay … I believe him now. This apparently qualifies him as unbiased. More likely it qualifies him as confused, or paid. Disregard.

And lastly: Did it ever occur to Paddy Mac that liberals don’t advertise their charitable works because, well, they don’t need the “pat” (bad pun) on the back. It’s conservatives and mostly conservative Christians who whine most about being picked on (except for dad29, his thoughts are straight forward, without any whining, I can forgive him his hallucinations). Disregard.

The other thing was directed to my attention by Charlie Sykes (hey, I was listening to the game the previous day). Anyway, this from Owen Robinson at the popular SM site, Boots and Slippers.

The MJS Editorial Board really is infuriating sometimes… okay, most of the time. For a prime example, let’s look at a few moist morsels of their latest shit burger that they expected us all to swallow this morning. At issue is the DOT’s proposed 46% hike in the registration fee that they requested two months after it was due and conveniently after the election.First, the MJS completely blows off the issue of the timing.

The timing of the recommendations was suspect because the recommendations, due two months ago, came after the Nov. 7 election. DOT officials say the timing was not political. Maybe, but it looks funny. And inconsequential. Does anyone seriously think that the announcement would have turned the election against Gov. Jim Doyle?

The thought that crossed my mind was this: If Green had been governor and this had occurred, do you think Owen would be complaining? Nah! Owen would probably be explaining that Green was above the fray and had in fact not wanted to introduce something like this so close to the election. Kind of like Bush and Rummy. Hmm, using Paddy Mac’s logic above, does this mean all conservatives are liars?